Another Great Weekend in the Country

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Yesterday was a full day. By the time the sun set I was as tired as I can ever remember being but, it was a good tired. I spent the whole day working outside. Dre' did a few things inside and she had to run some errands but she spent most of her day with me working, too. We finished the hen house. I have include photos to show our work.

When you look at the photos, hopefully you will be able to see what we have done. The top "story" is the laying room. This is where we will put the nesting boxes. I designed it to hold up to 16 boxes and if you look at the pictures you can see we have built two wide doors for accessing the boxes and the eggs. On the opposite side is the door for the chickens to enter the house. At the end there is a door below and a hinged access door for cleaning. The door below is for Scooter. He will have a piggy palace down there. It is lined with tin roofing for strength and warmth. He will be in hog heaven down there. He will be the proprietor of his own little "chicken ranch" which of course means our first chicken will have to be named Dolly in honor of the movie The Best Little Whore House in Texas.

Next weekend I will try and build the small yard for the hens and put up the poultry netting around the open area below laying room. When that is done I will be looking for about eight or ten mature laying hens. I am thinking about getting a variety of hens that will include Araucanas Barred Rocks, Golden Sex Links and may some New Hampshire Reds. I am looking for breeds that are not aggressive and maybe even want to be around our family. The boys want to get some chicks but since I don't have electricity to the hen house yet I can't get any really young chicks because they need to be warm for the first five weeks of their life. Of course Logan's and Holden's answer to that was "they can stay in the house until they are big enough to go outside." That is not happening.

Logan had school baseball practice and Holden had Soccer practice. Now, the day is winding down and I am sitting on the porch, listening to a local country music station waiting for the sun to set. It is about 75 degrees here and a stiff breeze is blowing out of the south west. I am sipping on a cold glass of iced tea and enjoying the good life. Tomorrow I have to return to work after my brief vacation. The guys and Dre' will be back in school on the down hill slope toward the end of the school year.

I am about to go in the house and wait on The Bible to come on TV. Then after that The Vikings will be on. For a person that watches very little TV, I sure am enjoying these shows.

I think it is about time to call it a day so I am going to end this post now. I hope everyone had as good a weekend as I have had.

Until next time...John

Saturday...A Weekend Farmer's Dream Day

I didn't get the day started as early as I wanted to but, I know it is going to be a great day. Today I will continue to work on the hen house. It is coming along great. I put the floor in the upper area and the roof is on. Today I intend to get the siding on and begin putting the hinged door where the laying boxes will be located.

My son Will is visiting with two of his children. Hunter and Daisy are here with us and his oldest Hannah will be arriving today. I am not going to write long. There is too much to do outside and the day is to wonderful to waste. I have said many times that we decide to endure the cool damp winters and the long hot and humid summers for the wonderful months of March, April, early May, October and November. The weather in these months make living in Mississippi worth while. Oh, let's not forget the people. Forget about what you hear on the news and have heard for the past 70 years about Mississippi. All of those stories are no more true than the stereotypes you hear about anywhere else in the world. Of course, there is just enough truth to the "legend" to make it believable. In reality, Mississippi like every other place in the United States, no, the world is full of good people enjoying the lives they sometimes have to struggle through. We are good people with deep agrarian social roots. We work hard and don't like to depend on any one else for pretty much anything. Now, with that said, we don't like to depend on anyone but, when we need help there is usually someone that will recognize it and come running to help. Not dish out charity...just help a friend, neighbor or family member when they are in need. When there is sick person in the house--a family member has surgery--or someone just has a really bad cold. Someone is going to bring you "supper". If your yard needs mowing and you have just had surgery someone will load their mower in the back of their pick-up truck and come over and take care of it for you And if the worst happens and there is a death in the family, the casserole patrol activates and enough vegetable dishes, roasts, fried chicken, hams, heavy casseroles, desserts, rolls, bread and cold cut platters will show up at your house to feed you and all your family and visitors for a week. Oh yeah, let's not forget the sweet tea...you can't have a meal in the south without lots of sweet tea.

Yeah, we are just a bunch of good people taking care of each other as we walk through this time on earth together.

Ok, I am sure you are wondering why I went off on this tangent and I really don't have a good reason other than I want those of you reading this from from some far-flung part of the globe to understand that Mississippi is a great place, just like the great place you live in. Good people just getting along.

I am about to go out and work on the hen house and about a dozen other projects I have going.

Until next time...John

Life Through Rose Colored Glasses

I read a quote from an Englishman that went something like, "People have a tendency to see country life through rose colored glasses." I think there is some truth to that but if you live in the country and take those rose colored glasses off...allow your eyes to focus and get accustomed to the light out here you see it is still pretty rosy.

For example: I got out of bed early this morning, brewed coffee and took my iPad out on the front porch to check email and possibly do a little writing should the inspiration hit me. The sun was rising on a clear, cool, beautiful morning. As the sun began to throw his beams across the pasture and through the trees surrounding our house, the morning birds began to call to one another. I heard the chirp of chickadees and the blue jays warning everything and everyone around them. In the distance the crows began their chorus of calls and then softly to the southwest of the house I heard a pair of doves softly calling to each other. The temperature was in the forties this morning and it was cool but there was promise to a much warmer day and as I sat there, I knew spring was just around the corner. It is only a week until vernal equinox and life will begin to change...come alive with color, eventually bearing fruit for the rest of the year.

As I sat there, my thoughts moved to the few things I have already planted and the others that I am going to plant in the next few weeks. If I am attentive, those seeds will grow and bear vegetables and fruits that we will can, dry and freeze for the months ahead. I thought too about the seeds sprouting under the soil and the miracle that this process really is. I remembered my seed flats that have begun to sprout and spring forth. The tender plants are fragile now but in time they will be strong and able to stand up to the wind and the rain that will make them stronger.

My thoughts drifted to the budding trees and the plum trees that grow next to our old barn. They don't produce every year but just about every other year they provide us with enough plump juicy plums for Dre' to make enough plum jelly for a couple of years. This is a wonderful treat on any morning but especially on a cold winter morning when it is dark and bleak outside and the taste reminds us of warmer months and the bounty of God. A couple of years ago we gave some of our friends, the Packers from Australia, a couple of jars of Dre's jellies to take home with them. Several months after that Rob posted on his Google+ page that he was finishing up some jelly that Dre' had given him. He shot a photo of the jelly spread on a homemade scone and though he wasn't sure what kind of jelly it was, he was sure it was delicious and they had savored every taste of it. I messaged him that it was her plum jelly, which I am certain would win a blue ribbon at any county fair anywhere in the country.

Some years the plums don't make but every year the wild blackberries...nuisance that they are to the pathways and the pasture's edge, produce berries--free for the picking. Those berries can be eaten straight off of the vine or made into tasty cobblers, preserves and jelly. We prefer jelly at this house but preserves are some folks favorites.

As the sun rose all of these thoughts came into mind along with that quote I had read somewhere. Rose colored glasses...maybe. A life of rosy possibilities...for sure.

Now, it is off to work I go. I have a busy day ahead.

Until next time...John

Started the Hen House

With the cost of everything going up and the fact that we never know what commercial chickens have been fed to produce assembly line eggs we have decided it is time to own our own flock of chickens to produce Rocking-H Farm raised eggs.

I want you to understand we are raising them only for eggs. I am not raising them for meat. I will swap eggs for fresh chickens if anyone wants to but, I can't raise them, name them and then eat them. When I was a child we raised chicks for eggs and meat and it was a very natural thing. I am just too soft hearted to kill something I raise. If I were raising hundreds of chickens I would not have any problem with it, but when you have 15 or 20 hens named Lucy and Ethel and Myrtle you just need to take care of them. Feed them and nurture them and they will take give you protein filled eggs and feed you. Then when they get old they can retire and live their lives in the lap of luxury until their days are done...naturally. Enough of that.

We decided several months ago that when the weather warmed we were going to buy some laying hens, build a hen house and raise some chicks. As of today, we are well under way. We went to our local lumber yard/ building materials dealer yesterday and bought everything we need to build a high end chicken house for our soon to be purchased hens. I am building it to last. It is constructed of landscape timbers, pressure treated wood and barn siding. We started the construction today and I hope to have it completed on Saturday. The house is large enough to have sixteen nesting boxes which means if we can get sixteen laying hens we will have more than enough eggs for us and plenty to share with our friends and family. There may even be enough to swap for some frying chickens, I don't know.

The weather has been great here and tomorrow and Saturday are supposed to be even better than today so we should make good progress on our "chicken operation". I will keep you posted.

I have included some photos of our hen house in progress. Oh yeah, they will be residing in Scooter's fenced in area with him. He told me he was wanting some company and he thought a few hens with all their clucking would be good for him. I think he really just wanted some chickens. For those of you that are new to my blog, Scooter is our 16 year-old pet pot bellied pig. He, by the way, is a great friend and family member.

It goes with out saying, but I will say it anyway, we love our animals.

That is about enough for today.

Until next time...John.

An Afternoon of Chores

The first thing I did this afternoon was check out my three new batches mead. I wrote a while back about how I have ventured into the "art" of making mead. My first batch is several months old. It has been racked twice and has been placed in a gallon glass jug for aging. In a few weeks I will bottle it into several smaller bottles for storage and later gift giving. I had my first taste test a couple of weeks ago and declared a personal victory. I will be the first to say that it can be improved, but it is pretty darn good. I tried to make this a little drier than the mead I had tasted before and I succeeded...to a fault. I think this batch is a little too dry. I did read that you can add honey to it to make it sweeter so I will probably will do that when I bottle it.

A couple of weeks ago I made two more gallons and placed them in our cool dark pantry for fermenting and aging. I then realized I had purchased enough honey to make a fourth gallon so I did. Those of you that have read my blog in the past know that my mead recipe includes one orange in it. I didn't have a regular orange so I used what I had at the time so this last batch was made with a blood orange. I have named this batch Viking Blood Mead. I have included photo to show how the batches are progressing.

When I was out a few minutes ago I took a couple of photos of our small raised-bed garden to share with you. Since I just planted seeds on Saturday, nothing is coming up yet but, I will keep you posted as it hopefully starts to grow and produce.

I am about to go out and work on the new hen house we are about to build. I will take photos and share them with you as I progress through its construction.

A Beautiful Spring Day

What a fantastic day! It is spring in central Mississippi. There are flowers blooming, trees budding and the grass is beginning to turn green. My boys and Dre' are out of school for spring break and I am working in the office some and in from the house some so I can be with them during their time off.

Last weekend we worked hard around the house. Dre' doing some spring cleaning and I worked in the yard and garden. All of the activity around our little "homestead" this week pretty much explains why I have not had the time to sit down and blog. I will make up for my lost productivity in the next few days though.

Back to our past few days. Saturday I woke up early and started getting seed starter flats ready. I planted a multitude of different things to try and get in the ground in the next few weeks. I planted everything from basil to peppers and have them strategically placed in indirect light around the house. After that I started to work in the raised bed gardens. I connected my two raised beds ad made them into one angular bed. In the area that connects them I prepared the soil and added compost and peat moss and planted two types of seed potatoes. I planted russets and yukon golds. I then covered them with a thick covering of straw and as they grow and stick their heads up above the straw I will continue to add more straw providing them more room to grow. This is the first time I have ever planted potatoes this way but I am very excited to see how they produce. I got the whole family out to watch and help with the planting so they would, first know how it was done, and second feel some ownership to this garden plot.

If I have the time today, I am going to snap a couple of spring photos for the blog. It seems like it has been a long time since I have written anything. I am going to have to get more discipline in my routine.

That is enough for now.

Until next time...John
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